Many faithful churchgoers encourage us to face hard times by saying, “Jesus has your back.”
We call on the Lord from those crisis moments, admitting we cannot cope alone. We recognize our need for divine intervention when things get tough. When our efforts to get through the struggle have fallen short, we pray for heavenly backup. After God offers His answer and provides the strength to sustain us, we offer thanks to our wing-man. With Jesus at our side, we can survive this life.
But what if He stood elsewhere in our battle? Is there a better way to face life’s warfare than to call on the Lord to back us in crisis?
What if we stopped praying for Christ to have our back, and instead trusted him to fight in front of us? He already stands in the future, armed far beyond any weapons we could wield. The Lord knows our best strategy, and when that tactic is to simply let him fight on our behalf.
Human beings resist the notion of feeling helpless. We want to steer the battle’s tide toward victory. To feel we have the power to affect the outcome of good vs evil in our lives and in the lives of those for whom we feel responsible. The illusion of our control roots back to the start of our struggles with evil and suffering–the original moment of our departure from alignment with Truth.
Turns out, there’s nothing weak about acknowledging helplessness. There’s strength, life, and power in submission and trust.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:9-10).
So, let’s stop calling for Jesus to back us up. No more references to the Lord as the wing-man who steps in after we’ve done our best to handle it on our own. Rather than fighting with the imaginary weapons we’ve grown comfortable with, we can set up a secure defense which is aligned with reality.
To shift our approach from fighting the lions of the world with paper swords toward allowing the Lord to establish our victory, we need the following:
- Daily reality check(s) about our “control”
- Trust
- Submit
- Listen
- Follow, letting Jesus lead
- Repeat
Be Encouraged,
Tina
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